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No, that's not how it should work or the point we should take away

June 4 2012 at 5:44 PM
Phred  (Login Phred01)
Sufi


Response to The royal tyrrell museum might need a renovation now.

Science is a method, not anything more, not anything less. It's a way of looking at the universe that lets us determine what is real and what isn't. What is true and what isn't.

Now, if I publish a paper that says I've found evidence of something the quickest way for someone to make a name for themselves is to show how I'm wrong. Scientists actually are quite competitive and not all lovey-dovey. They fiercely attack each other and work to disprove each other's ideas. When they cannot is the only time those ideas stand. And anyone can do it. But you have to do it within the method. That's the only rule. You don't get to just claim that, say, evolution isn't true when you have no evidence to back up your claim.

With me so far?

So your allusion that science is a belief that cannot be questioned is frankly, stupid. Any idea that gets to the point of being published has already been so fiercely questioned that it's passed some serious tests. But once it's published then it's open game. Everyone in that area of specialization will be experimenting to either reproduce the results or hopefully disprove the results. And that's how the method works.

Now, if you don't want to use the method then fine, but don't expect anyone to take you seriously. And that's the problem you seem to have. You don't want to do the work. You don't want to understand the information. You don't want to use the method. You just want to stand up and say, "I don't think that's true" and have everyone fawn over you like you've got a valid opinion.

The other thing is that while there have been some hugely wrongheaded theories. We keep getting more and more right. We went from the sun orbiting the earth, to the earth orbiting the sun, to the earth orbiting the sun in non-circular orbits. And much of what we've done is getting rid of dogma and other religious thought about how things work that isn't based in reality.

Your point about amateurs? That works when you're talking about inventing the original telephone or the assembly line. But who invented the atomic reactor? The lithium-ion battery? The OLED screen? Who invented the smartphone? Yeah, teams of people working with funding. It's a pretty picture but what you said is bullshit. As things become more and more complicated and require more equipment to develop there are less and less things invented by amateurs. Or armaturs as you misspelled it. You also misspelled medieval.

I'm sorry, but I've seen the attitude you display many times before and I've yet to see it displayed by a really intelligent person. Am I condescending? Yeah, I am. Quit tearing down things you don't understand.

 
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